A software provider can sell software and/or service products, for example, by selling subscriptions to customers for products. An entity that has purchased a product subscription is an owner of the subscription and has a right to use the product for the period of the subscription. An owner's use of a subscription can be represented, for example, as an ‘entitlement.’ For example, a customer, such as ACME Company, purchases ten 3-year subscriptions to Product Foo. ACME Company is the owner of the ten subscriptions, which can be represented by ten entitlements, and can assign the ten entitlements to various systems. When a system is granted an entitlement, the system can access a product repository to receive product updates for the Product Foo.
Product asset management tools are provided to allow software providers and customers to manage the product subscriptions that have been purchased and consumed, the patches, updates, etc. Conventional product asset management tools, however, do not offer a convenient way to know what products have been installed in various systems. In addition, in a traditional product asset management environment, the various systems register with a central authority to receive an entitlement from the central authority to access a product repository coupled to a content server. A content server can manage access to product repositories that store product software (e.g., installation software, software updates, patches) for different products. Systems can send a request to the content server for access to a product repository, for example, to receive a product software update. The content server, however, does not have the ability without the central authority to determine whether a system is authorized to access the product repository.